The deployment of equipment such as computers and other electrical devices requires appropriate infrastructure to support it. Such infrastructure can include, but is not limited to, physical “brick-and-mortar” buildings or other protective shells consisting of walls, floor and roof. Traditional “brick-and-mortar” buildings are built up by contractors on site or are retrofitted from existing warehouses. The traditional brick-and-mortar data center is generally time consuming and expensive to put together and does not lend easily to scaling flexibility. The protective shells that enclose and protect the server equipment may also contain multiple premanufactured HVAC systems sharing the same floor space as the computer equipment. Other brick-and-mortar buildings employ premanufactured HVAC equipment located outside on the ground surrounding the perimeter of building enclosure or installed on the roof of the building. This outdoor HVAC equipment is usually large in scale and expensive, taking up large amounts of additional land space and or adding building cost due to high roof loading requirements. Moreover, remote placement of HVAC equipment increases airflow (distance), decreasing efficiency and inherent costs.
Computer rooms and other building spaces intended for specialized uses often contain equipment that requires precise control and regulation of environmental conditions such as temperature, humidity and general air quality in order to ensure proper operation of equipment (such as, but not limited to, computers) installed in such spaces. Cooling requirements for these types of spaces are typically much greater and more stringent than most building spaces due to, for example, the need to dissipate heat generated by computer equipment operating in the equipment rooms. Humidity control requirements are typically stringent as well since excessive moisture in the air can cause operational and maintenance problems with computing and electrical equipment. Similarly, general air quality requirement such as removal of air-borne particulates is critical for proper operational life of computing and electrical equipment. Redundancy of cooling/climate regulation systems is often essential as well, due to the critical nature of the computing and electrical equipment that may be installed in these spaces. Sufficient redundancy and backup systems are often used in these spaces to ensure continuity of operation of critical equipment.
In recent years, the single largest application for such spaces is what are called computer data centers, which consist of numerous servers installed in spaces with HVAC cooling infrastructure to dissipate equipment generated heat, and to remove humidity and particulates. Computer data centers typically reside in brick-and-mortar buildings that have been purpose-built or renovated to accommodate computing equipment (usually in the form of rows of server racks) and associated electrical equipment. With the explosive growth in the world's computing capacity requirements, the growth of data centers around the world has been similarly explosive.
A drawback of built-up infrastructure as discussed above is that the time for deployment of the required equipment is very long. In today's rapidly expanding computing world, this can often cause bottlenecks in the ability of a company to roll out additional computing capacity. The extended traditional deployment time also requires long-term forecasting which is not always possible. In the dynamic computing industry, there is often a need for rapid responses to changing market demands. With the extended deployment time, this option is often not available.
The costs associated with building up this type of infrastructure are also considerable, particularly with regard to costs associated with construction of a building or shell, electrical infrastructure, and HVAC systems on site.
Moreover, traditional brick-and-mortar data centers suffer from inefficiencies in terms of environmental control. Brick-and-mortar data centers are typically large scale warehouse type facilities defining a building envelope which is not completely controlled for conditioned air leakage, thereby diminishing efficiency. In addition, due to the scale of such brick-and-mortar facilities, there is less opportunity for precision climate control, all the while allowing for infiltration of unconditioned air and thus allowing unwanted particulates into the white space.
Brick-and-mortar facilities also suffer from their scale. In terms of air conditioning efficiency, the ability to control climate over a large floor area, which may have server racks and servers located over fifty feet from the cooling source, is a limitation inherent in brick-and-mortar facilities. This inherent inefficiency may result in selected servers being effectively and ineffectively conditioned depending on their widely distributed location over the extended floor area of the facility. It is typical that servers may be disposed in rows of racks extending more than forty server racks deep and typically as many as sixty server racks deep. The feasibility of distributing conditioned air over rows of server racks extending forty to sixty racks deep is a well-known limitation of brick-and-mortar facilities.
In recent years, in an industry attempt to move away from the traditional deployment of brick-and-mortar data centers, various companies have designed and deployed pre-manufactured modular data centers to try to mitigate some of the problems associated with traditional builds. Modular data centers are typically made in the form of packaged equipment, with most of the assembly being constructed in a factory as opposed to being built up on site. Such modular data centers can be suitable for either indoor or outdoor environments, with most being configured for indoor use. Some modular data centers can be installed on a vacant lot serviced with power, such that a building is not required for the site.
The purpose of the modular data center is to provide the required physical protection of computer and electrical equipment along with mechanical infrastructure required for the rapid deployment of computing capacity. A typical modular data center has a pre-built casing/enclosure comprised of separate modules. For ease of shipping and installation, such modules are typically sized in a ten by forty foot form factor. These modular data centers are separated into sections for servers as well as separate sections for cooling. The cooling infrastructure in modular data centers is separated from computing and electrical equipment in separate modular sections often installed above the computer and electrical equipment modules. Representative of such top-down modular data centers is that of CZAMARA, et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 9,101,080) which describes the typical arrangement of modular data centers with air handling capacity positioned over computing capacity and incorporating external condensing operations for refrigerant generation and regeneration. This type of separated deployment of refrigerant generation adds complexity, cost and time, as well as requires a larger profile on site. Moreover, this type of on-site stacking of cooling infrastructure and computing and electrical storage modules requires additional labor-intensive scope with respect to mechanical interconnections between stacked modules. This on site connection and assembly introduces uncontrolled quality penalties.
With respect to typical modular data center ten by forty foot form factors, certain limitations are introduced. Rows of server racks are typically disposed longitudinally along the length of the standard form factor. Longitudinal disposition of rows of server racks provides utility in terms of access to servers and delineation of hot and cold or conditioned and exhaust aisles. Dimensional constraints limit the installation to twenty racks or fewer per form factor. Cooling infrastructure is typically attached to or stacked on these server rack modules in separate modules which do not share service access with the server rack modules.
Most modular data centers currently on the market are narrow in scope, and are built for temporary use as a stopgap until a brick-and-mortar installation is ready for use. They are often built from a “server container” standpoint, with insufficient attention paid to integrating HVAC and computing infrastructure. This “server-in-a-box” approach limits the utility and versatility of modular data centers as well as their viability as permanent replacements for brick-and-mortar data centers. Inefficiencies are introduced into the system through inferior equipment casing construction, as well as sub-optimal integration of separately sourced components.
For the foregoing reasons, there is a need for manufactured server facilities that can act as a direct drop-in replacement for conventional brick-and-mortar buildings while improving upon the construction methods, scalability and system configurations found in modular data centers currently on the market.